Friday, August 24, 2007

Italian or French?

My new roommate here in Rome is a UW law student named Tessa. Her mother is French and her father American of Italian descent. She speaks fluent french and much better Italian than I. We decided that we would speak either French or Italian at the apartment. However, we slip back into English more often than we should, especially since we both speak French fluently.

I seem to read Italian better than I speak it, and I speak it better than I comprehend it at this point. However, I've only been at it for two days. I'm sure I'll improve. Many of the words are the same as French, but are just pronounced differently. Once I get the phonetics down, I think I'll pick up on it very fast.

I managed to tell the lady at the bakery today that I wanted a roll to make a sandwich tomorrow so I wanted a roll that would stay fresh that long. (Most bread here seems to go stale overnight.) I was rather proud of myself. Of course, I didn't communicate that using full sentences, but I did manage to communicate my needs.